FILE - Former first lady Michelle Obamad smiles as she speaks during a groundbreaking ceremony for the Obama Presidential Center in Chicago on Sept. 28, 2021. Obama will narrate a new digital audio edition of Maurice Sendak’s children's book ""Where the Wild Things Are." HarperCollins Publishers announced Tuesday that the audio download will go on sale Oct. 31, the 60th anniversary of the book’s original release. (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast, File)
NEW YORK (AP) – A new digital audio edition of Maurice Sendak’s “Where the Wild Things Are” will have a very well known narrator: former first lady Michelle Obama.
HarperCollins Publishers announced Tuesday that the audio download will go on sale Oct. 31, the 60th anniversary of the book’s original release. Michelle Obama has read from “Where the Wild Things Are” before. In 2016, she and President Barack Obama acted out the classic picture book for an Easter event at the South Lawn of the White House.
“Maurice Sendak would have been absolutely delighted with Mrs. Obama’s superb rendition of “˜Where the Wild Things Are,’ and her strong commitment to children is much admired by us all in the Sendak household,” Lynn Caponera, president and treasurer of the Maurice Sendak Foundation, said in a statement.
Sendak, one of the world’s most famous children’s authors, died in 2012 at age 83. His other books included “In the Night Kitchen,” “Chicken Soup with Rice” and “Outside Over There.”